Concrete

Nakada works from an Alvar Aalto table in the living and dining area, adjacent to the kitchen. He saved on some elements, such as the plywood cabinetry, and splurged on others, such as the Finn Juhl chairs and Vilhelm Lauritzen lamp. A skylight beneath the angled roof allows in a sliver of constantly changing light.

The home’s mix of dark ipe wood, concrete, and glass give credence to Winter’s description of it as “an open bunker.”

A minimalist approach to design can make spaces feel thoughtful, bright, and more spacious than they really are—qualities that are paramount to a recent project in Poznań by Polish architecture firm mode:lina. The architects employed several tricks to make the home feel more spacious. Among them, mirrors were installed to visually enlarge the room, and smart storage spaces—even a recessed dog house—were built directly into the home’s walls. “The less visible [storage is], the better,” they say.

House in Matosinhos is a minimal home located in Matosinhos, Portugal, created by nu.ma. The lot, where the house is inserted, has a non-regular shape, longitudinal, and perpendicular to the street Nossa Senhora da Conceição. It was important to keep the alignment of the house with the existing buildings in order to avoid formal irregularities within the street development. The interior spatial distribution is separated by function and by floors. Due to the longitudinal nature of the lot, the architects proposed an internal yard at the center of the home to allow for natural light to enter the dining/living room and kitchen.

The bathrooms feature the same polished concrete flooring and poured concrete counters found elsewhere in the home. A honed granite recessed shower provides a visual counterpoint to the sea of white and steel.

After an unprecedented year of earthquakes, hurricanes, and fires, a bright light has been shed on the benefits of building with concrete.

A Jutland, Denmark, house designed by Mette Nygaard and Morten Schmidt of the architecture firm Schmidt, Hammer & Lassen features a minimalist bathroom that's naturally lit with Plexiglass skylights. Read the whole story here.